In a mobile communication system, if data transmission is required, resource allocation for a terminal needs to be performed by a base station if data transmission is required. It is necessary for the terminal to determine when the base station performs resource allocation to it, so the terminal has to monitor PDCCH channel (Physical Downlink Control Channel, physical downlink control channel) all the time. If PDCCH signaling is detected, then it means that the base station has downlink resource allocation or uplink resource allocation. However, such action for detecting the PDCCH will seriously consume the power of the terminal.
In order to reduce the power consumption of the terminal, a DRX (Discontinuous Reception, discontinuous reception) technique is adopted. So-called DRX means that the terminal stops monitoring the PDCCH in a period of time. In the DRX mode, a DRX cycle needs to be configured for the terminal by the base station, and one DRX cycle includes a time period of on-duration (On-Duration) and a time period of opportunity for DRX (Opportunity for DRX). In this way, the terminal configured with DRX can monitor the PDCCH in each time period of the on-duration in the DRX cycle; correspondingly, the base station also can perform resource allocation for the terminal in each time period of the on-duration of the DRX cycle. It can be seen that the use of DRX technique has considerably shortened the time for the terminal detecting the PDCCH signaling, and achieved the effect of saving the power of the terminal.
In the prior art, however, the terminal can only operate based on one set of pre-configured DRX parameters (including a DRX cycle, a time period of the on-duration, a time period of opportunity for DRX, and etc). When the DRX parameters of the terminal need to be changed during the DRX procedure so as to further reduce the power consumption of the terminal or for other reasons, it can only be implemented by the base station sending RRC (Radio Resource Control, radio resource control) signaling to re-configure the DRX parameters of the terminal. But, this will result in additional RRC signaling at the air interface, while the transmission process of the RRC signaling is relatively complex and involves many protocol layers, which leads to more signaling overhead and increases system complexity.